Recent writing:

Recent enthusiasms:

Julie Schumacher's epistolary novel Dear Committee Members: It is hilarious; she pushes the first person in all its vulnerability and quirkiness really hard; she pushes the epistolary form, with all its gaps and constraints, really hard; the narrator is a believable crank; his crankiness is a pointed critique of a skewed system; the letters have a sharp sense of the absurd; the style is playful and smart; the book loves language and rather than killing its darlings, gives them various scholarships and stipends and care packages; because the narrator is so smart, there is no limit to the language he can use. Thus, “semicompetent aphasic.” And, underneath it all, his heart really is in the right place, he is in favor of students and writing and humanistic study.

Leaving Rollingstone: A Memoir

"Leaving Rollingstone is the most important memoir to come out of the Midwest (or anywhere) in years, an indispensable work of American autobiography."